BlackHawkMines

Tag: aquariums

To be sure, keeping an aquarium would be a much more popular thing for people to do if it weren’t for one thing – an aquarium has to be cleaned. Well, did you ever think that you could just hire a few extra hands to clean your tank for you? Oh right! you’re thinking – as if you didn’t have enough stupid things to spend money on already, now you have to hire people? No, you’re not going to hire people – you can hire a few extra mouths to help you. They call them bottom feeder fish.

You’ve probably only ever heard of the term “bottom feeder” as an insult. Perhaps you never stopped to think what it actually meant – because it sounded pretty nasty. Well, if you look at it that way, what bottom feeder fish do certainly is a bit nasty. But why should you care – they save you all the labor by doing it.

Algae eating snails and bottom feeder fish – these are what you want to get for your tank. You just buy some and let them loose in your tank, and you have a cleaning brigade on the job 24×7, cleaning every piece of dirt there is as it comes.

No one should ever keep an aquarium without bottom feeder fish. What they basically do is, they eat up all the leftover food that clogs up the bottom of your tank. Have you ever seen your fish cruising the bottom of your tank rooting about for something to eat? Won’t all that rooting take care of any leftover food?

Apparently, as much as they root, they really don’t do a good job. You need little dirt sucking vacuums that were genetically designed for the job – you need bottom feeder fish. They are truly methodical and the know how to get it those leftovers.

The leftover food is an actual health hazard. It’s going to rot and it’s going to poison the water, little by little. The thing with the ammonia that rotting food releases is that it doesn’t cloud the water and warn you that something’s wrong. It’s invisible – and it just poisons the water. The nitrites and nitrates that come from rotting leftovers have another unwanted effect – they attract algae.

It doesn’t matter if you clean your tank three times a day. If there are nitrites and nitrates in there, the algae will come.

Okay, so you’re sold. Where do you find bottom feeder fish, and what are they actually called? Cat fish are great bottom feeders. As are snails and shrimp. Actually, shrimp could be a great addition to your tank. They are beautiful to look at.